Renew Newcastle: The Roost Creative – Opening. Photo by Luke Oliver.
Empty Spaces helps artists and other workers in the creative sector occupy on a short or medium-term basis, unused shops and office spaces.
Creative Enterprise Hubs
Creative enterprise hubs transform empty spaces into arts precincts through arts-led initiatives in town centres.
Creative enterprise hubs encourage commercial property owners, local government, State government and community organisations to recognise that the creative industries can drive economic and urban renewal.
Hubs operate in temporarily vacant and low cost or free premises, providing artists and arts groups with creative space. The rise of creative enterprise hubs coincides with strong and growing interest in creative industries in many regions and has grown out of the success of the Renew Newcastle Project.
The Empty Spaces project
Arts NSW provided support to he Empty Spaces project, managed through the University of Technology Sydney’s Shopfront Community Program, promoting temporary and short-term reuse of empty shops and other spaces for creative and community uses through:
- a website with the Creative Enterprise HubsToolkit, case studies and other resources, linking projects across Australia, and
- promotion, networking and advocacy activities and research.
Read the May 2012 UTS magazine article here
Empty Spaces resources
Creative Hub Toolkit
Arts NSW produced a toolkit launched in 2010 to help regions and organisations establish their own creative hubs and pop-up arts spaces.
The toolkit is made up of:
- Marcus Westbury’s Creating Creative Enterprise Hubs: A Guide based on the Renew Newcastle initiative
- NSW Planning’s Arts Revitalisation Projects and the Planning System providing information on the planning system
- Arts Law Centre of Australia’s Information Sheets providing legal background and sample documents.
Connecting with Landlords
Connecting with Landlords, a toolkit developed for the Empty Spaces Project website, will assist managers of empty space projects (using short-term, low cost creative spaces) to plan an effective approach to the landlords of premises they seek to gain access to.
The electronic assistance booklets examine three types of landlords:
- Corporate Landlords
- Shopping Centre Management and
- Receivers
The booklets are based on UTS research with landlords, and include ‘how to’ effectively communicate with landlords, address their concerns and successfully negotiate short-term use of empty space for creative projects.
Find out more here
Development funding was provided for the following creative hubs:
- Renew Newcastle
- Parramatta City Council for Pop-up Parramatta
- Gosford City Chamber of Commerce for Create Innovate Gosford City
- Lismore City Council for Art in the Heart Lismore
Arts NSW partnered Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority
to establish The Rocks Pop-Up
